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When the FBI told Martin Luther King Jr. to Commit Suicide. As Nixon press aide David Gergen reminded NPR listeners this morning, the FBI monitored King, and then sent the tapes to his wife to try to "neutralize" him as a civil rights leader. It also sent him a note with a copy of the tapes suggesting he commit suicide or they would release the tapes. It's worth remembering how recently and how grossly the government has abused the civil liberties of Americans in the very recent past - and may be again (check out the NYT stories today on the agent provocateur activities of the NYPD, as well as the NYT and WP stories this week on the Bureau counterterrorism division investigating PETA, vegan groups, a group protesting the use of llama fur, etc.), all in the name of national security. Here are excerpts of the King case study from the Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III, Final Report, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, United States Senate, April 23, 1976:
Here's the link to the rest of the Senate report.I. INTRODUCTION
From December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to "neutralize" him as an effective civil rights leader. In the words of the man in charge of the FBI's "war" against Dr. King:
The FBI collected information about Dr. King's plans and activities through an extensive surveillance program, employing nearly every intelligence-gathering technique at the Bureau's disposal. Wiretaps, which were initially approved by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were maintained on Dr. King's home telephone from October 1963 until mid-1965; the SCLC headquarter's telephones were covered by wiretaps for an even longer period. Phones in the homes and offices of some of Dr. King's close advisers were also wiretapped. The FBI has acknowledged 16 occasions on which microphones were hidden in Dr. King's hotel and motel rooms in an "attempt" to obtain information about the "private activities of King and his advisers" for use to "completely discredit" them.No holds were barred. We have used [similar] techniques against Soviet agents. [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business. 1
FBI informants in the civil rights movement and reports from field offices kept the Bureau's headquarters informed of developments in the civil rights field. ...
The FBI's program to destroy Dr. King as the leader of the civil rights movement entailed attempts to discredit him with churches, universities, and the press. ...The FBI sought to influence universities to withhold honorary degrees from Dr. King. Attempts were made to prevent the publication of articles favorable to Dr. King and to find "friendly" news sources that would print unfavorable articles. The FBI offered to play for reporters tape recordings allegedly made from microphone surveillance of Dr. King's hotel rooms.
The FBI mailed Dr. King a tape recording made from its microphone coverage. According to the Chief of the FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division, the tape was intended to precipitate a separation between Dr. King and his wife in the belief that the separation would reduce Dr. King's stature. The tape recording was accompanied by a note which Dr. King and his advisers interpreted as a threat to release the tape recording unless Dr. King committed suicide. The FBI also made preparations to promote someone "to assume the role of leadership of the Negro people when King has been completely discredited."
The campaign against Dr. King included attempts to destroy the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by cutting off its sources of funds. The FBI considered, and on some occasions executed, plans to cut off the support of some of the SCLC's major contributors, including religious organizations, a labor union, and donors of grants such as the Ford Foundation. One FBI field office recommended that the FBI send letters to the SCLC's donors over Dr. King's forged signature warning them that the SCLC was under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS files on Dr. King and the SCLC were carefully scrutinized for financial irregularities. For over a year, the FBI unsuccessfully attempted to establish that Dr. King had a secret foreign bank account in which he was sequestering funds.
The FBI campaign to discredit and destroy Dr. King was marked by extreme personal vindictiveness. As early as 1962, Director Hoover penned on an FBI memorandum, "King is no good." At the August 1963 March on Washington, Dr. King told the country of his dream that "all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, I'm free at last."' The FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division described this "demagogic speech" as yet more evidence that Dr. King was "the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country." Shortly afterward, Time magazine chose Dr. King as the "Man of the Year," an honor which elicited Director Hoover's comment that "they had to dig deep in the garbage to come up with this one." ...The depth of Director Hoover's bitterness toward Dr. King, a bitterness which he had effectively communicated to his subordinates in the FBI, was apparent from the FBI's attempts to sully Dr. King's reputation long after his death. Plans were made to "brief" congressional leaders in 1969 to prevent the passage of a "Martin Luther King Day." In 1970, Director Hoover told reporters that Dr. King was the "last one in the world who should ever have received" the Nobel Peace Prize.
The extent to which Government officials outside of the FBI must bear responsibility for the FBI's campaign to discredit Dr. King is not clear. Government officials outside of the FBI were not aware of most of the specific FBI actions to discredit Dr. King. Officials in the Justice Department and White House were aware, however, that the FBI was conducting an intelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation, of Dr. King; that the FBI had written authorization from the Attorney General to wiretap Dr. King and the SCLC offices in New York and Washington; and that the FBI reports on Dr. King contained considerable information of a political and personal nature which was "irrelevant and spurious" to the stated reasons for the investigation. Those high executive branch officials were also aware that the FBI was disseminating vicious characterizations of Dr. King within the Government; that the FBI had tape recordings embarrassing to Dr. King which it had offered to play to a White House official and to reporters; and that the FBI had offered to "leak" to reporters highly damaging accusations that some of Dr. King's advisers were communists. ....
The FBI now agrees that its efforts to discredit Dr. King were unjustified...
I doubt the FBI has gone so far off the rails in the current atmosphere but the point is that our whole system is designed to reject the arguments this administration is making - that we should just trust them because the threat is so great. Our whole system is designed *not to trust* their or anybody else's intentions to operate honorably in secret, without true oversight, contrary to most people's understanding of the rule of law, especially when it pertains to government monitoring of Americans by the full force of the US government intelligence apparatus.
Our system is designed *not to trust* that those operating with the powers of the government, often in secret, are wise, are judicious, are fair, are incorruptable. As the King case shows, history demonstrates that terrible abuses happen, in just such an atmosphere. Our system is designed to have checks and balances, oversight, strict limits to power of any single federal branch or agency, to limit these types of stunning, shameful, gross abuses, to make people accountable, to preserve individual liberties. Why? Because the wisdom of our system is to recognize, as Gergen said today, that power corrupts. The American public should never be asked by its leaders to just trust them. We should never be asked by our leaders to tolerate their acting outside the law in secret without active oversight for a sustained amount of time. Our system is designed to reject such arguments as a very dangerous slippery slope.